If you ran B2B outbound between 2020 and 2022, LinkedIn did most of the heavy lifting. Connect, wait, message, book call. Simple. Then, starting around November 2022 and accelerating through spring 2023, LinkedIn began enforcing harder caps: fewer weekly connection requests, tighter InMail restrictions on Sales Navigator, more aggressive warning flags on automation tools. The result is that teams who built their whole motion on LinkedIn are hitting a wall.
What actually changed
- Weekly connection request cap lowered to around 100–200 per account, down from effectively unlimited.
- Sales Navigator search throttling when the same account runs heavy lookups.
- Automation tool detection — Phantombuster, Expandi, Dripify users reporting soft bans and restricted accounts.
- InMail deliverability dropping as inboxes fill up and prospects ignore them.
Why the single-channel era is over
When LinkedIn worked at full throttle, a rep could reasonably hit 1,000 prospects a week from one account. In 2023 that's closer to 150–300. You can solve it by running more LinkedIn accounts, but that's a fragile, expensive, and increasingly risky workaround. The honest answer is that LinkedIn is now one channel in the mix, not the channel.
What multi-channel actually looks like in 2023
It is not "send the same message on email and LinkedIn". That annoys everyone and erodes trust. The teams doing it well are running sequences like this:
- Day 1 — Personalized email, short, one clear ask.
- Day 3 — LinkedIn connection request, no pitch.
- Day 5 — Email follow-up referencing a recent trigger.
- Day 8 — LinkedIn message (if connected), different angle.
- Day 12 — Short "breakup" email.
- Day 20 — Phone call (yes, really).
Each touch has a job. Each channel brings its own strengths: email for depth, LinkedIn for warmth, phone for urgency.
The infrastructure question
Running multi-channel by hand is a full-time job. Running it across a team is chaos. This is why 2023 saw an explosion of sequence tools, inbox rotation, and unified CRM views — not because they're shiny, but because the math of modern outbound stops working without them.
"We used to book 4 meetings a week from LinkedIn alone. In May 2023 that number was 1. We didn't get worse — the channel did."
What to do this quarter
If you're still running a LinkedIn-only motion, add one channel. Just one. Email is the obvious choice because the infrastructure is mature and deliverability is solvable. Get your domain warmed, set up a sequencer, and give yourself 90 days of data before judging it. Teams that layer email onto a working LinkedIn motion typically see total booked meetings rise 40–80% within a quarter.